Wednesday

getting published

This section is still in development. For now, here are a few things that have been absolutely crucial on my own path to publication:

Just workYou have to prove yourself. It’s that simple. First, the work has to be good, and second, it has to get read by “the right people.” So work until it’s good, and then comes the time to figure out how to get it into an agent or editor’s hands. But don’t forget the working part! Too many writers are worrying about publication too soon. Work first. Work!

Go to conferencesI am eternally grateful to the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators for creating a place where hopeful writers can congregate and empathize and learn, and also meet editors and other publishing professionals, and see that they are actual people, and even better: the best kind of people -- the kind who love books!

Editors ARE looking for books. They DO want to find exciting new authors. So why is it so hard to get your manuscript in front of an editor’s eyeballs? I believe that has a lot to do with the fact that there are a lot of writers sending in reams of paper to all the publishing houses and agencies, creating daunting and horrifying “slush piles” from which almost no one ever emerges. Do not contribute to the slush pile lightly. Pity the folks who have to deal with that mountain of paper. Do your research, send your manuscripts to appropriate places (like, don’t send a manuscript about white suburban characters to a publisher who specializes in ethnic and multicultural titles, or don’t send a picture book ms to an editor who only does teen fiction.)

Sadly, no matter how awesome a manuscript is, the chances of it being discovered in a slush pile are almost nil. Don’t spend you life waiting around for someone to dig in a slush pile for your book. Go to conferences. By going to conferences, you may luck into a way around the slush pile! For one thing, some editors will let you send a manuscript directly to them if you attended their workshop at a conference. Your manuscript will go right to their own personal slush pile, which is better by far than the general heaping slush pile!

Also important, by hearing editors speak at conferences, you can get a good sense of which ones might be interested in a book like yours. At the conference where I first heard my editor speak, I also attended workshops by a number of editors who, though they seemed like really neat people, were not looking for fantasy adventure books. So I zeroed in on the handful of editors who seemed like a better fit. Of the four editors I heard at conferences and sent my manuscript to, I received offers from three of them! I have never sent a manuscript to an editor I have not heard speak at a conference, though I don’t have a rule about that -- it’s just great to get a sense of who an editor is. It’s a very important relationship, after all!

So, it was incredibly awesome that I got offers on Blackbringer. I don’t mean to gloss over that. It was a glowing high point of my life, and I believe that the reason I got those offers is all about conferences. Aside from helping you meet “the right people,” conferences help you learn how to write books! I can trace the evolution of the Blackbringer manuscript through the workshops I attended in successive years at the SCBWI national conference held in Los Angeles. That conference was sort of the loom on which my book was strung. I learned about writing a middle-grade fantasy series. I met my agent. I met a wonderful editor who helped me along for quite a long time, giving me feedback on early drafts. I heard invaluable pieces of advice from writers and editors and artists and art directors and agents. I learned the business and I worked hard for my luck. I feel very, very lucky, but believe me, I spent much money, time, and bullheaded determination “studying to get lucky!” (that right there is a conference-gleaned phrase, spoken by the writer Graham Salisbury.)

I’ll repeat the Thomas Jefferson quotation again: “I’m a big believer in luck. I find that the harder I work, the more of it I have.”

Yeah.

If you don’t write for children, I don’t know what other conferences to suggest, but I know there are lots and lots, so find them out. Yes, they cost money, but to me, that money has been as well spent as my college tuition!

I found myself starting to get into “the basics” of getting published, but I felt a little defeated by the massiveness of this topic -- I might beef up this section some time. But for now, I'll just say that the above two points are, to me, the most important two points, and I'll say that you need to know the publishing industry if you want to work in it. Don't just start sending manuscripts out willy nilly. That would be kind of like . . . [okay, I'm a bit stuck over a perfect metaphor here] It would be like, er, trying to send a letter to a friend in New York by addressing it just: My Friend, New York. [okay, not a perfect metaphor!] I mean, there's a whole lot more you need to know than that! This is a job, a business, a big, bustling, magnificent profession, and though you spend most of your time alone at home writing, you still need to know about it. So start learning.

I'll try to give more practical info and links here by and by. Good luck and have fun!

12 comments:

Laini Taylor, you are AMAZING! I discovered you via Shannon Hale, and lo and behold, you said things that I've been feeling for quite a while. Just a few days before or after I turned 25 (I can't remember which), a really famous newsanchor spoke of how she was leaving the job she'd held for over 25 years, and moving on to things she'd always wanted to do. It really made me stop and think -- what would I regret if I hadn't done it by the time I was 50? I'd gotten married and just had my first child, so the ONLY thing I could think of that I'd regret was not writing a book. It doesn't have to be published (although, I'd love to have that "box of books" moment!!!), but for me to create an entire world to live in for a while, I would really feel its death if I hadn't written by the time I was 50. Now, 5 years later, I find myself beside my road, and you totally spoke to my heart.

Just found you. Your energy, your enthusiasm, your dedication, your happiness spills over. I've bookmarked this page and will scour it for tidbits of wisdom. Thank you for caring enough to offer up your thoughts. It really means so much to those of us just starting out.

Hi! This is not really a blog, but rather a series of essays I wrote way back in 2007ish on what I thought I had learned about writing since I decided it was high time to finish my first novel. Some day I'd like to revisit and revise them, but for now, here they are! They're broken down in a sort of order, beginning with getting ideas and ending with getting published -- and all the glorious mess in between!

Here's what I think I know:

Quotes about writing:

"It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?"-J.M. Barrie

"Write the damn book."- Jane Yolen

"Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist."- Jane Smiley

"I have always wanted to write a novel. What prevented me from doing so until now is there was nothing stopping me from not writing it."- Larry Doyle

"Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life."

-Lawrence Kasdan

"The question authors get asked more than any other is "Where do you get your ideas from?" And we all find a way of answering which we hope isn't arrogant or discouraging. What I usually say is "I don't know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again."-Philip Pullman

"A writer is someone to whom writing is more difficult than it is to other people."- Thomas Mann

"The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook -- the gilt-framed portrait of the book -- right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear."-Bonnie Friedman

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."-Mark Twain

“The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at the least, when a professional writer doesn’t do anything but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. . . . But he is not to do any other thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines . . . . Two very simple rules, a: you don’t have to write. b: you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.”

-Raymond Chandler

"Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But far better to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all."-Katherine Mansfield

"Fans think they want to see more than the 10 to 20 seconds of Itchy and Scratchy that we put on the show, but my feeling is less is more. Once you've skinned and flayed a cat, ripped his head off, made him drink acid and tied his tongue to the moon, there really isn't that much to say."

- Matt Groening, 1993

"What you have to do and the way to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that is another matter."-Peter F. Drucker

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity."- Louis Pasteur

"I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen."- Frank Lloyd Wright

"I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee."- Flash Rosenberg

"As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move. . . similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle."- Honore de Balzac

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."- Chekhov

"If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk."- Raymond Inman

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but, "That's funny. . ."-Isaac Asimov

"Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West."-E.M. Forster

"There are some books which refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself."- Mark Twain

"I don't love writing. I love having written."- ?

"I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work."- Thomas Edison

"Have compassion for yourself when you write. There's no failure -- just a big field to wander in."- Natalie Goldberg

On writer's block:"I don't believe in it. Plumbers don't get plumbers block and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expect sympathy for it?"- Philip Pullman

"You must convince yourself that you are working in clay and not marble, on paper and not eternal bronze; let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes. No one will rush out and print it as it stands. Just put it down; then another."-- Jacques Barzun

"Everything is miraculous. It is miraculous one does not melt in one's bath."- Pablo Picasso

"It's never too late, in fiction or in life, to revise."- Nancy Thayer

"Attack your next book with enthusiasm unknown to mankind."-Dr. Stephen Holtzman

"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."-Isaac Asimov

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."-Douglas Adams

"Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing. . . if you don't do it, you probably don't want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous -- which is very different."- Jane Yolen

"To change your life, start immediately. Do it flambuoyantly. No exceptions!"- James Joyce

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let others spend it for you."- Carl Sandburg

"Every day is a gift, even if it sucks."- Sherry Hochman

"Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader."- Joseph Joubert

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."- James Michener

"Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential."- Jessamyn West

"The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved."- Marge Piercey

"A writer needs 3 things: experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."- William Faulkner

"If you want to find, you must search. Rarely does a good idea interrupt you."- Jim Rohn

"You will go in the direction you are looking."- Horst the ski instructor

"First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do."- Epictetus

"I'm not sure why we are here, but I'm pretty sure it is NOT in order to enjoy ourselves!"- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I'm a writer & artist. I live in Portland, Oregon with my husband Jim (also an artist) and our small daughter, Clementine Pie. My novels are Dreamdark: Blackbringer, Dreamdark: Silksinger, and Lips Touch, which was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. My next novel, Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Little, Brown) will be out September 27, 2011. I believe our dreams are REAL THINGS, not wisps and air, and it is our job in this life to make them come true, because no one else will do it for us, and because this is our one and only "wild & precious life"!